Hypnotized and Humiliated - Chapter 1 Part 1 of 2

Before we begin, I would like to mention, that one of the primary components of this story is hypnotism.  However, I did absolutely no research on the subject of hypnotism and I don’t ever plan on doing any.  But even I know that hypnotism doesn’t work quite the way I have depicted it.  I did however (I think) try to make it all sound as plausible as possible.  So please, remember that this is just a story.  A fantasy.  A warped fantasy at that.  And try your best to go with the flow and enjoy it.  Please!

That being said, I truly hope you enjoy, Hypnotized and Humiliated.   

Karen

Hypnotized and Humiliated

By Karen Singer

Office Map

 

Chapter 1 Part 1 of 2

1 Month Earlier

At exactly eleven o’clock Friday morning, Gwen’s desk phone rang.  “Hello?”

“Hey Gwen.  It’s Samantha in Human Resources.  Please send Maria up here right away.”

“Okay.  I’ll tell her,” Gwen agreed.

“Maria!” she said to the woman at the desk right in front of hers.  “HR wants you up there right away,” she said with a smile.  It was Gwen’s last day at work.  Maria had been in the department the longest and Gwen figured that she was one of the candidates to take over her job as supervisor… although personally she would have picked either Terry or Leanne over Maria any day! 

She watched as Maria got up from her seat.  There was a gleam of hopeful anticipation in her eyes.  She stopped briefly at one of the desks further up as Felicia grabbed her arm and looked excitedly up at her for a moment.  The two Latin women in her tiny department had always been good friends.

An hour later, Gwen was a little disappointed to see that Maria hadn’t returned yet.  They were all leaving for a special luncheon.  Since it was Gwen’s last day with the company, all the girls were buying her lunch.  It was their way of having a small send-off party before she and her husband moved to Hawaii where he had taken a new job.  She couldn’t wait!

Gwen was disappointed that Maria didn’t make it to her luncheon.  But what none of them had expected was that when they got back to the office, Maria’s desk had been completely cleared off.  Only the computer remained and that had been turned off.  Everything else was gone!

Gwen immediately called up to Human Resources to find out what was going on.  She listened carefully, her face immediately showing her surprise.  “Why?” she asked.  She listened then replied sadly.  “I understand.  Thanks.”   She hung up the phone in a daze and looked up to see every woman in the office staring at her. “Maria has been fired,” she told them.

“Why?” the surprised women all wanted to know.

Gwen shook her head.  “They won’t say anything,” she told them.  “It’s company policy not to divulge information like that.”  She took a deep sad breath.  It was a disappointing way to have to leave the company. 

At a little after four o’clock that afternoon, Gwen’s phone rang again.  “Hello?”

“Hi Gwen, it’s Samantha in Human Resources again.  Can you send Terry and Leanne up please?”

“Sure,” Gwen replied, although with a hint of nervousness after her last call from HR.

“Terry… Leanne… Human Resources wants you up there now.”  She forced herself to smile as she said, “Either of you would be my first choices for this job.”  She watched as the two women walked out. 

Five o’clock came.  Quitting time.  But Terry and Leanne hadn’t returned yet.  Gwen was tempted to turn their computers off for them, but she left them on.   She spent a good ten minutes hugging everyone and saying goodbye all over again.  And then she left for home… and Hawaii!

On Monday morning, the women all came to work and found both Leanne’s desk and Terry’s desk cleaned out just as Maria’s had been.  Now they were gone as well!

Loretta, the section manager hurried into the room.  She spotted Vivian and headed straight for her.  “Since Gwen isn’t here anymore and you’ve been here the longest, you’re going to have to hand out the work assignments to everyone until they decide who’s going to fill Gwen’s position.  Can you handle that?”

Vivian’s eyes lit up with delight.  “Of course I can!” she replied eagerly. 

“Good!” Loretta replied.  “I’ll have everything forwarded to you then.  HR is sending someone else down right away to help out since you’re so understaffed now.  I gotta’ run.  Call if you need me.”  As fast as she had come in, Loretta hurried out again. 

Vivian knew she had been in the department the longest now.  With Maria gone, the supervisor’s job should go to her!  She just had to wait for Human Resources to rubber stamp it.

One Month Later

“Look at him out there!” Vivian said to the five other women at the morning break table.

“Who?” Marian asked.

“I said him,” Vivian replied.  “There’s only one him out there!  Phillip!”

Marin looked through the large glass window back at the desks in the main office beyond.  There was only one man out there.  The only man assigned to her office.  It had been two weeks now since she had started with the company… as supervisor of this particular little department.  She was still trying to catch up on everything and everyone.  “What’s wrong with him?” she asked.  “All I’ve seen since I’ve been here is how nice he is to everyone.  And I can tell you for a fact that he works awfully hard.”

“Huh!” Beverly grunted.  “Yeah, he is nice and polite, and I know he works hard.”

“So what’s your problem with him?” Marian asked.

“He could be a little friendlier during the day,” Courtney replied.  “He hardly says a word when we’re discussing something out there.”

“So he’s quiet,” Marian replied.  “He’s working!  Besides, what men do you know who like to discuss the kind of things that women do?”  She looked around the table and saw nothing but blank stares.  Stares that told her that the women in front of her just didn’t like the guy.  And as far as she could see, he was the perfect worker.  Polite, good at his job, never a problem.  Except that now it seemed that nobody liked him!  She knew that other than herself, he was the newest member of the department, but that was no reason for the others not to like the guy.  Heck he was even fairly good looking!  If she was twenty years younger, she’d probably be throwing herself all over him.

“It’s just that…” Brittany began.

“It’s the way he got the job,” Felecia replied.  “They fired Maria, Terry, and Leanne.  Then they moved him down here from upstairs!”

Vivian’s vehemence was almost palpable.  “All three of them got fired because of him!”

Marian was shocked.  “What did he do?”

“We don’t know,” Brittany replied.  “They won’t tell us anything.”

“So how do you know they got fired because of him?”

Courtney rolled her eyes.  “We all know it!”

“The jerk!” Beverly hissed softly.  “Both Terry and Leanne had two young kids.  They needed this job!”

“And Maria had been with the company for over twelve years!” Felicia added.

Marian sipped her coffee and watched the man working in the office beyond.  Evidently, he was going to bear more watching than she realized.

When break time ended, they all filed out of the little room.  Marian stayed behind to start making another pot of coffee for the next group that would occupy the little room, the four others who had stayed out in the office to keep things running while the first group took a break. 

To Marian, the little break room looked like it should have been an inner office instead of the use it had been given.  But somewhere in the past a small counter with a sink and even a tiny refrigerator had been added along with a table and chairs.  Marian had been told there were a number of offices like it in this part of the building.  Since the room was so handy and breaks were only fifteen minutes long, it made the perfect place to relax and talk for a few minutes without traipsing to the main break area in a distant part of the building.

It didn’t take long before Heather, Lisa, and Ashley entered.  Phillip was still at his desk working, as she had seen him do countless times now.  He hardly ever took a break.  Maybe because there were no men around for him to talk to. 

Instead of going back to her desk when the coffee was ready, she waited until the others had gotten some, then she poured herself another cup.  She wanted to ask these girls about Phillip and what they might know about the women who had been fired, but before she had a chance to ask, Phillip walked into the room.  She watched as he smiled politely at everyone before he fixed himself a cup of coffee.  Then without a single word, he took a small sip of the hot liquid and carried it back out to his desk… as he usually did. 

“What do you think of Phillip?” Marian asked the three women, interrupting the conversation they were just starting.  She was startled to see the looks of discontent on all their faces.

“He shouldn’t be here!” Ashley declared somewhat angrily.

“Why is that?” Marian asked.

“Don’t ask!” Lisa replied.

“Why?” Marian asked.  “He’s been nothing but nice since I got here.”

“He got three of us fired!” Heather declared. 

“How did he do that?” Marian asked.  She saw nothing but blank looks from the others. 

“He did it!” Lisa finally replied.  “And everyone knows it!  He wanted the job down here and now he’s got it.”

Marian wasn’t too sure of any of the facts here.  But it seemed that every woman in her little department shared the same opinion about the one and only male.  Not one of them wanted him around.  Thinking that Phillip needed more looking into, she carried what was left of her coffee back to her desk, passing Phillip’s desk along the way.  What did he do?  And for that matter, what did the other women do to get themselves fired?  And how could Phillip have had anything to do with that?

There were five women instead of six at the afternoon break table.  And not quite the same first group of women as had been there in the morning.  The women didn’t have a “set” break schedule, Marian just took it that they liked to switch things around a bit so they could talk to someone else once in a while.  Not that they needed to.  The work got done in her little office, but the chatter was more often than not, non-stop.  She didn’t really care as long as the job got done.  And office relations seemed to be very good… other than what she now knew about Phillip.  He had suddenly become her one big sore spot. 

She hadn’t had time yet to check on anything about him during the day.  She had been far too busy.  But it was on her mental list of things to do.  She poured her coffee and sat down at the table, already tuning into the conversation they were having.  The women had been talking about jobs they had each “endured” in the past.  One by one, she learned something about each of the four women already at the table.  And then the rotation turned to her, the final woman there.

“How about you?” Heather asked.  “What jobs did you have before you came here?  Anything really odd-ball?”

Marian rolled her eyes.  “Odd-ball?”  It took very little thinking to come up with the one big “odd-ball” job that she’d had – and still had once in a while.  She set her coffee cup on the table.  “I know you won’t believe this,” she said, “but I used to make my living as a stage hypnotist.  I still do charity shows once in a while.”  The looks of disbelief were exactly what she had expected.

“Really?” Brittany asked, completely surprised by what Marian had said.

Marian nodded her head.  “I did,” she replied.

“So… you like… hypnotized people and made them do all sorts of stupid stuff?”  Ashley asked.

Marian smiled.  “I’m afraid so.”

“Like what?” Vivian asked.

“Oh… nothing that bad.  Usually it was just the same old things for each show.”

“Like what?” Vivian asked again.

“Oh… like making someone act like a chicken, or a dog.  Some I made sit there and suck there thumb and talk like a baby.  Others I made perform like ballet dancers or jump around the stage and do all kinds of silly things.  Some I made forget things like their name or numbers or letters.  There are a bunch of things I’ve done in my shows.”

“Geez!” Heather replied, totally awed.

“So why are you working here now?” Ashley asked.

Marian smiled.  “It pays a whole lot better!  And it’s a paycheck I can always count on.  I never knew when I was going to have another show and the amount I got paid depended on how many people I had in the audience.  This is a lot better, a lot easier, and a lot less stress!”

The conversation about Marian’s stage show carried itself back out to the office, and seemed to take on a life of its own as it was discussed among all the women for most of the remainder of the afternoon.  Marian stayed out of it as much as she could and just let the women talk.  She couldn’t help but to look up though when she heard Phillip suddenly make a remark about the subject.  He sometimes would add something to the conversations, but it was mostly rare.

“You can’t hypnotize someone and make them do something they don’t want to,” he declared as if he was an expert on the subject. 

“You’re telling me that the people in those shows wanted to act like a chicken on stage in front of a bunch of people?” Brittany asked.

“All I’m saying,” Phillip replied, “is that somewhere inside of them, they didn’t really mind it.”

“So what’s the truth, Marian?” Courtney asked loudly, so that Marian could hear her at her desk in the back of the room.  “Can people be hypnotized to do something they don’t want to do?”

Marian took a deep breath before replying.  “Well, mostly, that is true,” she replied.  “Like you can’t make someone kill someone if it’s against the things they believe in.”

“But how about all the things you made people do?” Beverly asked.  “Wouldn’t most people be just as much against the humiliating things like that?”

Marian nodded, but only slightly.  “Yes, mostly they would.  But in cases like that, they almost always still did whatever I told them to do.  If I had someone hypnotized and told him he was suddenly a dog, then he believed he was a dog and acted that way.  He was no longer burdened with the concept of it being humiliating and funny to everyone in the audience.”  She looked around at her workers.  She could see them all trying to come to grips with that concept.  She saw Phillip roll his eyes and go back to work at his computer. 

The office conversation was lighter after that.  But it was almost time to go home anyway.

The following morning, the subject of hypnotism came up again at the morning break table.  “So were you really good at it?” Beverly asked Marian.

Marian nodded.  “I like to think so.  I did it for a pretty long time.”

“What I want to know,” Courtney asked, “is how you can hypnotize someone so fast?  I mean, I saw a guy do it on stage once, and it seemed to take no time at all.”

“You just get to be good at it after a while,” Marian replied.  “Experience helps a lot.  But those people on stage are really only in a very light trance, they’re not usually all that deep so it doesn’t take as long.”

“So...” Felicia started, “could you hypnotize someone here?”

“Yeah!” Beverly agreed.  “Do it so we can see.”

Marian shook her head.  “No, it wouldn’t be a good idea.  Besides, I don’t think any of you would want to be laughed at by the others if I made you do something like I usually did.”

“Hypnotize him!” Vivian said, pointing at Phillip out in the office.

“Yeah!” both Beverly and Courtney agreed at the same time.

“It would serve him right, the little shit!” Vivian added.

Marian was again faced with the hostility that the women all held against Phillip.  Should she do it to him?  She knew without a doubt that she could.  But it was still wrong.  “No!” she finally declared.

As she often did, she made a second pot of coffee as the occupants of the break room changed. 

“Beverly said they wanted you to hypnotize Phillip,” Heather said as she came into the room and saw Marian still there.  “But you won’t do it.”

Ashly laughed.  “Oh God, I’d love to see that!  I’d love to see you make him do something funny!”

“Me too!” Lisa agreed.  “You should do it!”

“No,” Marian said with a shake of her head.  “It wouldn’t be right.”
“Was it right for him to have the other girls fired like he did?” Beverly asked.

“You should do it!” Ashley urged.

“Yeah, he deserves it!” Lisa agreed.

Marian looked at the three women.  They all not only wanted to see her in action, they desperately wanted to get back at Phillip for whatever role he had in the dismissal of the other women.

“Besides,” Ashley added, “remember what he said yesterday… that you can’t make someone do something they wouldn’t want to?”

“You should make him do something really humiliating!” Heather agreed.

Marian was shaking her head when Phillip walked into the room to get his usual cup of coffee… that he would inevitably carry back out to his desk.  She watched as he filled the cup, and she watched as he carried it out again.  The entire time he had been in the little room, nobody had said a single word, but everyone had watched him intently.

“You should have done it,” Lisa declared the moment he was gone.

“Yeah,” Heather agreed.

Marian shook her head again.  “But…”  But she saw all the intent looks on the women’s faces in front of her.  She shook her head again… and rolled her eyes.  “Oh all right!” she finally said as she caved in to their wishes.  “Stay here.”

She left the break room and headed straight for Phillip’s desk.  “Phillip,” she said as she got close to get his attention.  She saw him swivel around in his chair to face her.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“Um… do me a favor, okay?”

“Sure.”

“Stand up a minute.”

Uncertain as to why, Phillip stood.  “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“I want you to look at this mole on my forehead for me,” she said.  “Look closely at it, please.”

Phillip was very surprised by the request, but he looked at the small spot just above her left eye.  “What’s the problem?” he asked. 

“Just keep staring at it closely,” she said.  “Just concentrate on that spot please.”

The girls in the break room all came out the door, but stood back silently to watch.  Every other woman in the room was just as silent… every last one of them watching what was going on between Marian and Phillip. 

None of the women could hear very well what Marian was saying to him since she was talking to him so softly.  But they all watched, completely enraptured, as Phillip seemed to continue to stare at Marian’s head.  They all saw Marian slowly raise her right arm, and then touch her index finger to Phillip’s forehead.  And they all watched as he immediately fell backwards into his chair… sound asleep. 

“She did it!” Vivian whispered. 

One by one, the women gathered closely around Marian and the sleeping man in front of her.

“Make him act like a chicken!” Heather said.

But Marian shook her head.  “No.  I think that instead we’ll do something more subtle with him.” 

Marian turned her attention back to Phillip.  “Phillip,” she said, “you are now starting to feel a bit anxious over something.  That anxiousness is starting to grow so that you’re now feeling very uncomfortable because of it.”  Even with his eyes closed, she could see the worry and stress starting to cross his face.  “Phillip,” she said, “there’s a way to relieve all that stress and worry and feel much more relaxed and comfortable.”  She paused for a moment to let those words sink in.  “Would you like to feel better?” she asked.  “Would you like all that stress and anxiousness to go away?”

All the women watched as he nodded his head and said, “Yes.”

“Good, Phillip,” Marian replied.  “I want you to think back to the time when you were a baby.  Back then, whenever you felt stressed, you sucked your thumb.  That always made you feel better.  I want you to think of yourself as a baby right now.  You’re a baby and you feel stressed and worried, so put your thumb in your mouth now and suck on it.  You will immediately notice that all your worry and stress will magically go away.”

The women all watched as he quickly brought his thumb up to his mouth and started sucking on it.  The moment he did, his face seemed to take on a look of relief. 

Marian paused and looked at all the women around her.  “How’s that?” she asked.  Her reply was in the form of both laughter and applause.  And through it all, Phillip just sat there with his eyes still closed, sucking his thumb… as if nobody else was around.

“Can you make him do it all day?” Vivian asked.

Marian leveled a rather wicked smile at her before turning back to Phillip.  “Phillip,” she said.  “You feel calm and relaxed now that you’re sucking your thumb.  Calm and relaxed.  You’re feeling so relaxed, more and more relaxed.  More and more relaxed.”  Slowly, she took his trance to a deeper level while Phillip sucked steadily on his thumb. 

“Phillip,” she finally said when she was ready, “whenever you hear me say to you, ‘Phillip likes to suck his thumb,’ you will immediately drop into a deep trance just like you are now, and you will start sucking your thumb.  Sucking on your thumb will relax you more and more and will help you go into a deeper and deeper trance.” 

The only reason she had set this trigger in him, was because all the women wanted to see him continuing to suck his thumb like a child.  The trigger was going to be needed later to make him stop doing it. 

Once the trigger was set, she continued.  “Phillip,” she said, “in a few moments I am going to count down from five to one.  When I get to one, you will awaken completely, but you will not remember being hypnotized at all.  You will have absolutely no memory of being hypnotized.  When you wake up, you will feel perfectly fine and happy.  You won’t even need to suck your thumb.  But as time goes on, you are going to start feeling more and more anxious and worried about something.  And when you do, you will have more and more difficulty keeping your thumb out of your mouth.  Something inside of you will know that sucking on your thumb will be the one and only thing that can relieve your stress, so you will put your thumb into your mouth and suck on it like the child you once were. 

“At first it will feel perfectly natural to you,” she told him.  “In fact, when you start to feel a little anxious, your thumb may go naturally into your mouth by itself for you to suck on and you won’t even notice.  You may not even notice that you’re doing it.  But that naturalness will start to wear off eventually as you realize how wrong what you are doing will be.  But the minute you take your thumb out of your mouth again, all that stress and anxiousness will come piling back at you, far worse than before.  And as before, sucking your thumb will be the only relief you will have against feeling so anxious.  The harder you suck your thumb, the better it will be,” she told him.  “As long as you suck your thumb like that, you will have no worries at all.  But remember, the minute you take it out of your mouth, all that stress and worry will come right back again – worse than before.  Every time.”

She paused to look around at the women behind her.  “Maybe you all better get back to your desks now and do some work!”  She was glad to see the women get the hint as every last one of them disappeared to their desks.  But not one of them started doing any work because none of them stopped watching her. 

She turned her attention back to Phillip.  “I’m going to start bringing you out of your trance now by counting down now from five to one.  Remember, when I get to one you will feel perfectly fine and happy, and you will remember absolutely nothing about ever being hypnotized.”  She paused again, then said, “Five!”  There was a long pause before she said, “Four!”  Again the slow pause.  “Three!  Turn and face your computer now so that you can start working when you wake up.  Two!  …  One!”  And with that, she walked away and back to her own desk as Phillip opened his eyes and immediately started working again.